The Ubuntu Phone is set to make its debut in 2014. In a phone press conference this week, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, formally announced the company's plans to launch phone hardware this year.

A key part of the Ubuntu Phone promise is that of code convergence. Currently, 95 percent of the phone code is exactly the same as Ubuntu on the PC. The expectation is that as the Ubuntu Phone moves into full product availability, there will be 100 percent alignment between the desktop and phone versions, Shuttleworth said.

The next major milestone for Ubuntu is the 14.04 release, which is set to debut in April. Ubuntu 14.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release and is intended to be a stable platform for desktop and server users. Full convergence with Ubuntu Phone will not be part of 14.04. Convergence pieces will land in the 14.10 release in October as well as the 15.04 release in 2015, Shuttleworth said.

OEM partners are charged a fee per device, and revenues associated with the Ubuntu app store are shared with partners, Shuttleworth said.